Tag: Ron Franscell

Ready or not, a new year is about to begin, even though it doesn’t seem like that long ago when the “old” year started. An amateur philosopher friend of mine has two theories about why time passes so much quicker as we get old. Theory No. 1: Every year is an incrementally smaller fraction of the…Read More…

This essay originally appeared in 1998. It appears here today with a few minor but festive updates. No businessman in the history of literature has been as misunderstood as Ebenezer Scrooge. His very name is now a synonym for pinch-fisted churlishness and humbuggery. Why? Certainly because that was Charles Dickens’ aim when, in his classic…Read More…

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” —William Faulkner So the would-be mass murderer at Ohio State University this week was apparently inspired by the hateful words of American-born cleric Anwar al Awlaki, al Qaeda’s most powerful recruiter before he was obliterated in a US drone strike in Yemen in 2011. A few years ago, I…Read More…

Where I grew up, you learned the smell of rain coming, and could damn near tell the exact day, maybe the exact moment, the seasons changed. Well, a dark season lies ahead. In 2009, in the earliest, scariest days of the Great Recession and the uncertainty of a new presidential administration, I predicted an uptick…Read More…

I ended a lifelong friendship today. I canceled my local newspaper subscription. And it breaks my heart. I feel like a traitor to a cause I have embraced since I was a kid. Or maybe it’s a feeling that I wasted my life on such a passion. Or maybe I simply felt a fool to…Read More…

Some stories are about love, and some are about pain. But painful love stories like the star-crossed romance between Annie Beatrice McQuiston and Claude “Cowboy” Henry started long before they met in a whorehouse on a humid night in Depression-era Texas. EXCERPT Joe Calloway died naked in a Louisiana rice field, trembling with terror and…Read More…

Every crime writer has heard this little heckling voice, usually from the cheap seats, but sometimes from inside his own head. It isn’t always loud, but it’s often piercing. Tragically, today is the 43rd anniversary of a monstrous crime against two of my childhood friends in the small town where we grew up: Two young sisters were abducted…Read More…

The story you are about to read is true. No names have been changed to protect anybody. I’m not that creative. ~~~~~~~~~ The city is Beaumont, Texas. I carry a chewed-up pencil, a ratty notebook and my fingers are stained with bubble-jet ink. I’m a newspaperman. (Here’s where you, the reader, sing, “Dum-de-dum-dum.”) It was…Read More…

Among the historic, infamous, and heartbreaking deaths we explore in the brand-new book MORGUE: A LIFE IN DEATH (St. Martin’s Press) is the presumed suicide of the troubled genius Vincent van Gogh. Presumed. When van Gogh’s latest biographers, Pulitzer-winning authors Steven Naifeh and the late Gregory White Smith, were perplexed by the evidence, they eventually…Read More…

If government was required to generate 1,000 jobs for every new word it tried to insert in the cultural lexicon, we’d all be employed. The Washington Post recently ran a guest column by U.S. Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Karol Mason, who has headed the Office of Justice Programs since 2013. (And while we’re editing, how…Read More…

Would you click to watch someone die? Maybe you just did. The proliferation of cameras—smartphone, news, surveillance, security, webcams, dashboard, GoPro, cops’ body-cams, and “old fashioned” digital models—means the moment of death will increasingly be captured. And the wildly unpredictable moral compass of social media and web content means more of those images will be…Read More…

A week after Goodreads picked MORGUE: A LIFE IN DEATH among its best May books, Amazon has named it one of the 10 Best Nonfictions hitting the shelf this month! These are marvelous endorsements for MORGUE (St. Martin’s Press), which officially hits the shelf on May 17. Co-authored with Dr. Vincent Di Maio, one of the world’s most acclaimed medical examiners,…Read More…

Goodreads has recommended MORGUE: A LIFE IN DEATH among its best May books! This is a coveted honor. If you’re among the 39 million (or so) active and engaged readers who get Goodreads newsletters, please take the hint. Co-authored with Dr. Vincent Di Maio, one of the world’s most acclaimed medical examiners, this book offers a rare glimpse behind the…Read More…

Winston Mosely murdered New York bartender Kitty Genovese in an infamous 1964 knife attack that raised questions about the role of bystanders in crime. When he died in prison this week at age 81, his old mug shot (far left in the lineup above) was splashed across the Internet and we all thought simultaneously, “Yep,…Read More…

“Meticulously researched guide book into the baddest of the bad in LaLa Land. Franscell confirms what history has always known: Los Angeles is the ‘Queen of Angels’ and the ‘King of Devils.’ Highly recommended!” —STEVE HODEL, NYTimes bestselling author of “Black Dahlia Avenger” and former LAPD homicide detective Los Angeles is where America’s dreams and…Read More…

If you brushed your teeth this morning before settling down to read whatever fascinating new material was posted at ronfranscell.com, you unwittingly celebrated a prison inmate. That’s right. In 1770, British merchant William Addis was doing time for causing a riot. That’s when he decided that the customary tooth-cleaning of his day—rubbing your teeth with…Read More…

The potato patch behind Dermot Healy’s stone cottage wasn’t much bigger than a parking space, but the Irish winter had left it dog-eared and bedraggled. “The first thing,” Dermot said as he handed me the spade, “is to turn the soil.” I’d come to Ireland to research a novel. Without a drop of Irish blood in…Read More…

Tomorrow, THE DARKEST NIGHT celebrates eight years since it was first published in paperback. Almost immediately it became a bestseller and readers continue to find it in great numbers today. It’s not because I am an extraordinary storyteller, but because this powerful story of two girls’ terror moves anyone who hears it to want to…Read More…

For a long time, I resented that my mother accused me of being a dreamer—”accused” being the operative word. To her, it was less than I was capable of. To her, creativity was fine for hobbyists, but not successful men. But as I grew into a decent journalist and professional writer, she slowly changed, even exhibited pride…Read More…

As I write this, my birthday is still about 13 hours away, but my first birthday well-wish has arrived from the other side of the world. It comes from my friend Shoukry Henain, a Cairo chef I met on the street there just a few weeks after 9/11, and who plays a small but sublime role…Read More…

Here is an excerpt of my upcoming book MORGUE: A LIFE IN DEATH, which explores the most historic, infamous, and heartbreaking cases of renowned medical examiner Dr. Vincent Di Maio. In this “clear, gritty, and enthralling narrative,” Dr. Di Maio and I guide the reader into the inner sanctum, behind the morgue door, to tell his fascinating life story…Read More…